AMD to launch tablet chips with high performance graphics… eventually

AMD sort of sat on the sidelines of the netbook space for the first few years, but this year the company introduced a line of chips that offered decent battery life, about 2-3 times the CPU performance of an Intel Atom chip, and support for 1080p HD video playback as well as 3D graphics acceleration.

Now it looks like AMD is taking a similar approach toward the tablet space. CEO Dirk Meyer said during a recent earnings call that the company probably won’t launch a chip aimed at tablets for another few years… but once AMD decides the tablet market is big enough to spend some time investing research time and money, Meyer says the company will likely focus on chips with “great graphics and video technology.”

Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have to wait 3 or 4 years to find an AMD powered tablet. There’s really not much stopping PC manufacturers from taking the same chips used in netbooks and notebooks like the Acer Aspire One 521 and Dell Inspiron M101z and putting them in tablets before AMD has time to develop a chip specifically aimed at that type of device.

Until that happens though, it looks like ARM-based chips and Intel Atom chips will likely continue to dominate the consumer tablet space, while high-end devices will continue to use more expensive, higher performance chips, just as they always have.

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Hmm…Now AMD has tablet amnesia? They’re already shipping the 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5450 in the HP tm2t tablet. I can’t blame them for their memory loss, considering that, despite the tm2t, Microsoft is promising that Windows 7 tablets will finally be available in the near future.